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Local leaders divide over President Barack Obama's gun control proposals

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In this July 27, 2012 file photo, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks in Hot Springs, Ark. Republican governors who’ve balked at creating new consumer health insurance markets under President Barack Obama’s health care law may end up getting stuck. Instead of their state officials retaining some control over insurance issues that states traditionally manage, Washington could be calling the shots.
(Photo by Danny Johnston, The Associated Press)

But New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a Democrat who heads the nation's most murderous city, said the proposal was a "step in the right direction," but one that should be broadened to expand mental health services and federal funding for local law enforcement.

In the wake of last month's killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the collective conversation has turned to the root cause of the massacre and others like it -- be it mental illness, or easy access to weapons.

Jindal on Wednesday reiterated his own gun safety proposal, which would track the "severely mentally ill" in a national database, accessible along with criminal records when one attempts to purchase a gun.

Jindal's plan is similar to those put forth by other conservative leaders, as well as the National Rifle Association.

St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said his phone rang all day Wednesday, with many constituents worried that the federal government was coming to take their guns away.

Gun control, he believes, will make no one safer. A person bent on violence will find a hammer, or a chainsaw, or a knife.

"I don't believe the enemy has ever been a firearm. The enemy has always been the deranged individual who picks it up and walks into a movie theater, or walks into a school," said St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain. "If we take the politics off the table, not one of those guns walked into a school alone. They were all in the hands of a mentally disturbed individual."

But others argue that guns are part of the problem. Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro on Tuesday noted that victims are far more likely to survive a fistfight -- even a knife fight -- than they are a gunfight.

Nearly 200 people were murdered in the city in 2012, mostly with guns. Adding attempted murders with guns, aggravated assaults and other gun crimes, there are conservatively 1,000 shootings in an average year in New Orleans, he said.

It also has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. No permit is required to own a gun, and citizens may carry a concealed weapon with a permit. In November, voters passed a NRA-backed constitutional amendment further protecting gun ownership by requiring the strictest legal test in scrutinizing proposed gun regulations.

"I believe that our biggest public health issue in this city is violence," said Dr. Elmore Rigamer, director of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. "It's a multifaceted problem, so it has to be approached in a multifaceted way."

Rigamer said he might support a database if it tracked only those suffering from certain types of serious mental illness -- schizophrenia with delusions, severe bipolar disorder, psychotic depression, or those who've already committed violence.

But the proposition is a tricky one: at what point is someone entered into the database, and who decides? What organization compiles and stores it? What is the information used for? And is there a guarantee of privacy?

Adam Lanza, the young man who killed 20 children last month, could have walked into any doctor's office the day before. The doctor might have been concerned, but perhaps not so concerned he would have alerted police.

It's a difficult, if not impossible, path to predict, Rigamer said. And only about 4 percent of those who commit violence in America are mentally ill.

So any discussion about mental health should be paired with one about gun control, he said.

"If you're talking about sheer numbers, reducing the number of deaths, you have to start by taking guns off the street," he said.

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas held a press conference after Obama's announcement on Wednesday to say that he, and the International Association of Police Chiefs, also supported Obama's plan as "a common sense approach" to reducing the both street violence and the threat of mass shooting.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, 300,000 people have been shot to death in the United States, he noted. That's nearly the entire population of New Orleans, killed by guns in one decade.

He commended the president's effort to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, specifically designed to kill in great numbers, along with bullets capable of piercing body armor worn by law enforcement.

"I don't know any police chief in America who could object to that proposal," he said.